


The Reality of Capturing

by LeannRyhmes



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Illness, Kidnapping, Murder, Suicide, ataxia, car crash, knife obession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26269834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeannRyhmes/pseuds/LeannRyhmes
Summary: When you imagine getting kidnapped, (and everyone has) what do you think of? Being locked in a dark basement, no windows or doors, nobody to hear you scream, no one to come in and save you. You either die or escape. Your kidnapper is ruthless, and it’s some giant chase to escape, right? But you get to your loved ones in time, and everything’s great, right? Happily ever after, right?Wrong.
Kudos: 2





	The Reality of Capturing

When you imagine getting kidnapped, (and everyone has) what do you think of? Being locked in a dark basement, no windows or doors, nobody to hear you scream, no one to come in and save you. You either die or escape. Your kidnapper is ruthless, and it’s some giant chase to escape, right? But you get to your loved ones in time, and everything’s great, right? Happily ever after, right?  
Wrong.   
It’s nothing like that.  
It’s not a game, it’s real life. You’re taken, from everyone who you love and who may love you, and you’ll probably never see them again. Someone has a knife to your throat, and you know that you’re going to die, slowly and painfully, with the blood that was once inside of you slowly pouring out on the floor. No one will be able to save you, and anyone who tries will die with you or be too late.  
Too late to save you, too late to save themselves, and too late to realize they can’t be a hero.  
\---------------  
I was taken on the day after my birthday. I had just turned 18, and finally gotten the car I had been asking for since I turned 15. I was so excited. Everyone else I knew had already gotten a car they would flaunt to their friends, whether it was their Mom’s BMW she had reluctantly let them use, or a brand-new sports car their dad had let them pick out themselves. My car was just an old Chevy my dad hadn’t wanted to get rid of when my parent bought a truck. I had gotten my license two months ago, but I hadn’t driven more than a few miles by myself.   
I live in the small town of Catasauqua, Pennsylvania. It’s less than 2 square miles, and we only have a few thousand people. But that means everyone knows everyone. And I like it there. But the one thing I don’t like is that the nearest mall is two towns away. I’ll have to drive more than a few miles to get to anywhere remotely cool to hangout.   
The only thing that I could possibly be worried about with my driving is the car’s new brakes, and my chronic ataxia. Ataxia is when you lose coordination or control over your limbs/movements. For me it’s rare, only happening occasionally and quickly. But I have a little arm band that tracks my location and sudden movements, so if I have an attack and start spasming, it’ll alert my parents. My parents love it. I hate it, obviously, because it’s the only thing that can make people stare ad say, hey look, that girl is not normal. And did I mention it glows in the dark? Yeah. Another thing that makes me not normal. And the not normal-ness comes with a lot of people constantly reminding you that you’re not exactly normal, and you can’t always do things like, for instance, drive. But after a year of tests and trials and medicating, the doctors cleared me to drive, but of course I have to be careful driving for more than 20 minutes.  
And the other thing, about the car’s brakes? The brakes on the car had started malfunctioning after my dad and I had gotten into a minor accident involving an icy road and a wolf. The brakes would work occasionally, but let you down mostly of the time. But my dad had recently gotten the brakes replaced at Daku’s Auto Body, which was a family business whose daughter was in my class at school. They had done a great job, and now the brakes worked perfectly, but of course my mother is still super worried something could happen.  
Moms.  
But I love my mother, even though she worries so much. That’s what she’s supposed to do. She’s supposed to worry, and I’m supposed to blow off all her warnings and mess up my life only to call her to put it back together again. It’s the circle of life. It’s what’s supposed to happen.  
But life doesn’t always turn out like it’s supposed to.  
\---------------   
I get in the car, turn it on, and pull out of my parent’s driveway as my mom watches me from the window in the door.   
Deep breaths.  
\---------------  
Edgar Bates had just moved to town, and he just wanted to get a coffee. He had just moved into this small town, hoping they didn’t get much news, because he had just gotten out of his 18-month sentence for unarmed robbery, and his wife had left him and taken the kids. All he wanted now was a cup of coffee and a magic potion to make him forget all his problems. He didn’t mean to kidnap her. He didn’t mean to kill anyone. He was making his way to the coffee shop he found on Google, passing the 17-year-old jewelry store that was always seemed to be open, full of standard ring and necklaces. But this time there was something different.   
A beautiful, glistening, diamond.  
Not a big diamond, but a small, shiny, engagement ring with a silver band. It was just sitting there, on the floor, probably dropped by a small child or a clumsy customer not paying attention. The old woman attending to the couple probably wouldn’t even notice if he came in. He could just walk in, pretend he dropped something, and pocket the ring. He could sell it, for $8,000 or so, and say he got dumped (which he sort-of had). It was that easy.   
Or, at least, he thought it was going to be easy when he walked in the shop.  
\---------------  
I was driving! It was going great!   
I wasn’t going to die!  
As I turned away from the road, just for a second, I looked into the jewelry shop across the street. I expected to see the sweet old Mrs. Paterson smiling at a customer, probably the very gentlemanly Mr. Tosh, who has yet to find the “perfect” ring to propose to his girlfriend of nine years. Instead, I saw the new guy in town, of whom I had only seen once (standing the dark in the only alley in town), picking up a brand new shiny diamond ring of the floor. I expected him to put it on the counter, but instead he looked around and put it in his pocket. But when he looked around again to make sure he was in the clear, he saw me. There was a second of just staring in shock, him that I had caught him and me, that someone would rob a sweet old lady like Mrs. Patterson. But then the car behind me honked, and I looked at the light. It was green. Oh. I had to drive. But I didn’t know what to do about the man. Should I let him go?  
The car behind me honked again and I realized I was going 35 mph and the speed limit was 50 mph. I pressed hard on the gas and speed up. That was my first mistake. When I had reached 50 mph and lifted my foot from the gas, the first thing I noticed wasn’t that the car was still speeding up. No. It was that I was driving by the George Taylor House, and they had decorated the trees again for the Fourth of July. And there was a man by the tree. The same man from the jewelry shop. He had probably cut behind the shop to get there faster than I had. The second thing I saw was that the speedometer was at 63 mph, and I wasn’t slowing down.  
The car was getting faster.  
I could still see the man, but he was running now.   
I had to get off the road before I kill someone.  
I swerve towards the end of the George Taylor House, and brake right before I slam into a tree covered in red, white, and blue. But the brake only made it worse.  
The tires squealed, and I could smell them burning. Then the car lurched forward and slammed into the tree, flinging me through the windshield and into the grass where I rolled, and dead leaves mostly broke my fall. I was sure I’d broken my arm.  
Holding my arm to my chest, I limped back to the car, hoping to be able to call 911, my mother, anyone. Someone who could help me. It was then I noticed that my bag left the car with me, and that my elbow was broken and the bone was sticking out.   
I couldn’t feel it. I guess I was in shock.   
And if you hadn’t caught on by know, I tend to notice things when it’s too late. Like when I hit my exposed elbow on the stick-shift of my car, and finally felt some excruciating pain, I finally noticed the one thing I should’ve seen before I crashed.  
A man, running towards me, with a frantic look in his eyes.  
And the small diamond shining in his pocket.  
\----------------  
Bates didn’t really know what he was planning to do with the girl when he got to her, but he knew that he couldn’t let her go, seeing what she’s seen. He couldn’t go to jail a third time; he could get 30 years in prison. His wife, who was a terrible nag, would never let him see his kids after that. He had to shut the girl up. But seeing as she was unconscious, he couldn’t just tell her to forget what she saw. So, he did the only thing he could think of to do.  
He dragged her out of the car and into the dark woods behind the George Taylor House.  
\---------------  
I can imagine my mother getting the call that her daughter had crashed her car was stressful, especially because she was just about to find out whether or not she could still have children. I can also imagine that it must’ve been stressful when she asked what hospital I was in, and the police told her that I wasn’t in the car. I can imagine that it was even more stressful when she was told there was a blood trail from the car to the woods, and when she put down the phone, the doctor told her she was pregnant. This must’ve been a lot of stress to put on a 42-year-old woman at once, so I can imagine why she had an aneurism.   
And I can imagine why when her blood vessels burst, she died.   
if you imagine your kidnapper, this strange man (who I’ve only see a few times), telling a girl (who he’s held in his basement for 3 weeks), that her mother basically died of shock because of her, you’d think she would sob, or cry out, or at least feel bad. But she doesn’t. She just sits there, and. feels nothing. She is broken.  
\--------------  
He tells me so often that he’s going to kill me, because if he lets me go, I’ll just go straight to the police to report the stolen ring, instead of reporting him kidnapping me. I guess he thinks that him killing me would be easier to cover up than an unarmed robbery with one witness. He twirls his precious knife, trying to scare me, like they do in the movies. So unnecessarily cliché. And totally not scary.  
He has never killed a person in his life. Probably never even been in a fight. I can see the way his hand trembles when he points the knife towards me. Or feel it when his hand is closed around my neck. I think he’s afraid to kill me. But not to hurt me, or to try and make me think he’s going to kill me, no.   
I have exactly 43 cuts, fresh and healed, on my body. Nineteen caused by knives and weapons (including a house key), and 24 caused by the crash, being thrown around, and just accidently hurting myself. And speaking of the crash, when I woke up, my arm was straitened and tied to a jagged broken piece of wood that wasn’t exactly straight, probably broken from a tree. It still hurt like crazy, but like any pain, you get used to it. (Until you forget and accidently move.) 

If my arm wasn’t broken, I would easily overpower him. I could grab that stupid knife out of his hands and slit his throat. No longer would I be staring at these dusty walls, waiting for him to kill me. It would be over, and I would go… somewhere. Where do you go after a time like this? A hospital? All they would do is ask me questions, then give me back to my parents. Now, I would not only be the weird girl with ataxia, but also the girl who was in a car crash and then got kidnapped. People would pity me, judge me, and never let me be a normal human being. Not that they did anyway. Being in real life after a traumatic event is sometimes worse than the event in the first place.  
It would almost be better to die.  
Almost.  
Now, I’m not a suicidal person, and I don’t really think that dying will solve all of your problems. But I do think that some things don’t go away, no matter how much therapy or help you get. And I think that’s the worst thing that can happen to you. So I understand why some people decide to kill themselves, but I wouldn’t do it.  
But some things change.  
\---------------  
Bates watched on his catch, the girl he had kept for so many weeks. Kept locked up, in a storage locker that wasn’t his. He had been lucky enough to find one of those storage key cards with the number and location on it. He had planned to return it, but things changed, obviously. He needed to kill her, or find some other way to get rid of her, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. And at this point, if he let her go, he could go to jail for life.   
He was surprised that she still didn’t know where she was, or who he was. He thought that small town people were supposed to know everything about everyone and everywhere. And throughout this whole ordeal, she had said nothing to him. He wondered if she was mute, but he remembered hearing her cry out when she crashed her car. But couldn’t mute people still make noise? Bates would have to Google that later. He felt like the girl was planning something, but if she was, she didn’t say it.  
\--------------  
The girl looked at the man in front of her, her captor. He was scruffy, to say the least. He always seemed to look like he hadn’t showered nor shaved in weeks, and just blindly threw on whatever clothes he found on the floor in the morning. He was unkempt and rattled. The girl thought that he may be afraid of her.  
Bates knew the girl had to be planning something. She was always staring at him. Whether it was looking him in the eye, or just absentmindedly watching him, she was always turned in his direction. A normal person would guess it was because he is the only human she’s seen for weeks, but Bates was paranoid. He only knew of kidnapping from the news or TV, and the person who got kidnapped always escaped, and the kidnapper always died or ended up in jail. He didn’t want either to happen to him, so he had to keep constant watch on the girl.   
Meanwhile, the girl was planning. Bates might not have been entirely unjustified in his paranoia. But Bates thought she was planning to escape, in which he was wrong. She was just planning to do another type of psycho ending: the one where everyone dies.  
\---------------  
Killing Bates would be easy. All I would need to do is take the stupid knife he loves from him, and stab him. Of course, things always seemed easy. But I don’t think it would be that hard, considering how weak and afraid he is.   
Killing myself…  
That’s a whole different category.  
\---------------  
Bates had decided. He was really going to kill her. He would just stab his precious knife into her neck, and then leave her to die. He hoped whoever owned this storage locker would never come back, not to see the bloody dead girl on the floor.   
Bates walked into the storage area, staring at his prey. She was disheveled, as someone would be after not moving for 3 weeks. Her muscled would probably all hurt when she finally tried to stand, and he wondered if her arm was healed yet. But it didn’t matter, as she was going to die soon.   
Bates twirled his knife, as he usually did, hoping it would generate some reaction from her this one time. But it didn’t. He continued to twirl it anyway, as it had become a habit. He walked closer to her, only just out of arms reach, and kept spinning the knife, like he was going to do something. Then before he could change his mind, he turned to stab the sharp blade into her young skin, and was taken aback when the girl turned, and pushed his arm farther, making him lose his grip on his only weapon. She scrambled to get the knife, and though slow from lack of movement, got to it before Bates. Because Bates was still lunging for the knife, it was easy to turn and stab the blade into his stomach.  
It was also easy to laugh at him gurgling up blood, watching it pour out of his mouth, staining his face forever red.   
It was almost too easy to start crying, knowing she had killed a man she never knew, knowing her mother’s life was over, and knowing her’s would soon be as well.  
And, surprisingly, the hardest thing to do was stab the knife, now covered in fresh blood, into her own stomach.  
And as she crawled her way over to the man she had stabbed, who was just now closing his eyes, blood pooling from both of their bodies, she knew that this was the end of her journey, and that this was how it was supposed to end.  
\---------------End--------------

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this wasn’t too graphic.  
> Also, the town, businesses, and locations mentioned in this book are all real, and all places I have been multiple times (except for the storage center). Catasauqua, and most other towns in Pennsylvania, are prominent places in American History. It would do everyone in the world a little good to go visit them someday (once again, not the storage center). You may be a little bored at times, but you won’t be sorry.


End file.
